LONDON — David Cameron is back at the Cabinet table.
The former U.K. prime minister appeared smiling alongside his new boss Rishi Sunak Tuesday, following his shock return to frontline politics.
Sunak made Cameron his foreign secretary during a wide-ranging reshuffle on Monday, bringing in from the cold the Tory veteran who will take up his first government post since resigning the day after losing 2016’s Brexit referendum.
As a private citizen who has not been an MP since 2016, Cameron will join the unelected House of Lords in order to take up the role — giving him the title of Lord Cameron.
The appointment split Tory MPs, who remember Cameron’s cheerleading for the Remain camp in that referendum and his heralding of a “golden era” of relations with China.
But it was all smiles — and dad jokes — as Sunak’s new cabinet met for the first time Tuesday.
Sunak welcomed those in his revamped team who were sitting in Cabinet for the first time, including the new party Chairman Richard Holden, Health Secretary Victoria Atkins and Chief Secretary to the Treasury Laura Trott.
“Also a welcome to those for whom it may not be their first time,” Sunak then quipped in a nod to the grinning Cameron, who was sitting opposite the prime minister.
The ex-PM was flanked by his old Cabinet colleague Grant Shapps — the defense secretary — and the Deputy PM Oliver Dowden, who once prepped Cameron for the weekly PMQs knockabout while an aide in No. 10 Downing Street.
“Our purpose is nothing less than to make the long term decisions that are going to change our country for the better,” Sunak told his troops. “And I know that this strong and united team is going to deliver that change for everybody.”
Now as an understudy rather than the main man, Cameron banged the table in applause along with the rest of Sunak’s footsoldiers.
